Word Count Check

After stopping by Church Street Coffee & Books for a London Fog Latte and Snowballs, I drove to my inexpensive hotel in a suburb about 20 minutes from our suburb.

I proceeded to check Instagram, as one does.

Then I took a 10-minute walk.

Then I set my timer for 45 minutes of writing work.

Instead of writing new words, I decided to pull together everything I’ve written over the past few years that’s related to the Spiritual Direction for Writers book. So, I opened a new document and began cutting and pasting notes, chapters, contemplative practices for the resources section, etc.

It took about 45 minutes to put everything into one document and Y’ALL.

This is what I discovered:

This document has 55,336 words.

My book is supposed to be 55,000 words.

Y’all.

I have been writing this book for a long time, and I am so much further along than I thought.

Many of the words in this document are very raw material, notes that need to be revised, and shitty first drafts of chapters I’ve written in the past few months. But all of it is relevant. All of it can be used in some way or another.

I won’t use all of it. I have a lot of new words I still want to write, a lot of threads I want to research and consider and sit with.

But I’m so much further along than I thought. This is such good news.

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